Exclusive: Tyler Federal Judge Davis to Join Fish & Richardson

© 2015 The Texas Lawbook.

By Mark Curriden

(March 30) – U.S. District Judge Leonard Davis of the Eastern District of Texas is taking his expertise in handling complex patent disputes to Fish & Richardson in Dallas when he steps down in May.

In an exclusive interview with The Texas Lawbook, Judge Davis said multiple law firms made inquiries during the past few months, but that he decided to practice at Fish because of the firm’s strength in intellectual property law and his personal knowledge of some of the partners.

“It made sense to go from the busiest patent docket in the U.S. to the busiest patent law firm in the U.S.,” he said.

Judge Davis has been on the federal bench for 13 years, including the past three years as chief judge of the Eastern District. From 2000 to 2002, he was chief justice of Texas’ Twelfth Court of Appeals in Tyler. He was the general counsel of the Texas Republican Party from 1983 to 1988.

When Judge Davis took the bench in 2002, there were less than 10 patent cases on the docket. Today, there are about 1,100 such disputes pending in the Eastern District.

During the past 13 years, Judge Davis handled more than 1,700 patent cases, including some of the biggest IP disputes in the U.S.

“When I arrived on the bench, I thought I would finish my career there,” he told The Texas Lawbook. ”But it got to the point where I am doing the same thing over and over.

“When I arrived, I didn’t know what a patent case was,” he said.

Tom Melsheimer, the managing partner of Fish’s Dallas office, said Judge Davis “had so many opportunities” to join other law firms but that he and Fish “put on a full court press” to persuade the Baylor Law School graduate (1976) to select them.

“The judge is the prize of the free agency market and we are very pleased that he chose us,” Melsheimer said. “It’s going to be a big change going from a federal judge to a lawyer at a law firm, but he’s not the kind of federal judge who lives in an ivory tower and is unapproachable.”

Melsheimer said that Judge Davis is not interested in being “the lead dog in trials” or having a mediation practice. He said the judge, when he joins on May 18, will provide clients with strategic counseling, case evaluations and case preparations, including conducting mock Markman hearings.

“He has a remarkable cache of information about IP litigation in East Texas,” he said. “Our goal will be to get him in front of our clients. He can take the client behind the curtain and tell them how things work in the Eastern District.”

Judge Davis said that his main job at Fish will be to educate clients, including about possible misconceptions about juries in Marshall, Tyler and Texarkana.

“I meet with juries at the end of every trial and I think that they get their verdicts right 99 percent of the time,” he said. “Some people think it takes a Ph.D to decide patent disputes, but these cases are really about who is telling the truth.”

The belief that East Texas juries are very plaintiffs-oriented is also misguided, he said.

“The problem was that most defense law firms were so summary judgment focused that they didn’t have experience in taking patent cases to a jury,” he said.

Judge Davis said that has changed during the past few years and that defendants are now winning jury verdicts just as often as plaintiffs.

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